BAGHDAD - A spate of Baghdad bombings killed at least 13 Iraqis Monday as US private Lynndie England pled guilty in Texas to abuse charges related to a picture showing her holding a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash.
In Australia, the government vowed to stand firm against insurgent demands to withdraw its forces from Iraq following an Australian contractor's kidnapping.
Amidst the violence, Iraqi leaders hammered out the final details of a government expected to be sworn in on Tuesday.
A day after a suicide bomber killed 25 people and wounded 50 at a Kurdish funeral in northern Iraq, bombers struck again in Baghdad, killing at least 13 and wounding 17, security and hospital officials said.
There has been a sharp upsurge in violence in the capital since Thursday when parliament approved a partial cabinet line-up.
Of the four car bombs that exploded Monday, one targeted a convoy carrying a commander of Iraq's elite police commandos. General Rashid Flaih escaped unhurt but two men in his escort were wounded.
Another car bomb blew up in a fashionable district of the city centre, killing nine civilians and wounding 10, an interior ministry official said.
Two policemen and two civilians also died and five people were wounded when a third car bomb exploded in the eastern Zayuna district, security sources said.
In an attempt to crack down on the violence, Iraqi and US forces carried out a series of raids in the Baghdad area, arresting 84 suspected insurgents.
North of the capital, four Iraqi soldiers were killed and four wounded in a bomb explosion, Iraqi army captain Assad Sadad said.
A policeman was also shot dead in the town of Khalis, security sources said.
In Fort Hood, Texas, England, 22, reached a plea bargain with military prosecutors in the latest court martial in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal which tarnished the reputation of the US military last year.
She asked for the sentence to be decided by a panel of military jurors.
England was accused of posing for a number of photographs in which prisoners were abused at Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad.
The proposed punishment agreed with prosecutors in her plea bargain will remain secret until after the military jury decides the sentence it believes she should face. England will then receive the lesser of the two sentences.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government would send an emergency team to Iraq to seek the release of kidnapped engineer Douglas Wood, 63.
But Howard, whose country has about 550 troops in Iraq and is deploying more, said foreign policy could not be "dictated by terrorists" and rejected the kidnappers' demand for a withdrawal of the troops.
The kidnapping was disclosed late Sunday when Wood's captors released a videotape showing him pleading for his life.
"Please help me. I don't want to die," said Wood in the video, sitting on a floor sandwiched between two masked men armed with assault rifles.
It was not known where and when Wood was seized, but the release of the video coincided with a visit to Baghdad by Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill.
Wood has lived in the United States since 1992 and is married to an American. He was working on construction projects in Iraq when he was seized.
The videotape bore the words Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq. The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on US soldiers and Iraqi forces, as well as the kidnapping of a Turk who was freed in September.
More than 25 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent months.
Iraqi security officials said Sunday they had arrested five suspects in connection with the kidnapping last year of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who is widely believed to have been murdered.
The arrests followed a raid in the Jaara area, south of the capital, where security forces found a bag, documents and clothes belonging to Hassan.
British embassy officials said only three suspects were being questioned.
As violence raged, Iraq leaders finally reached a deal to allocate six cabinet posts and a deputy premiership in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's cabinet to Sunni Arabs, a Sunni MP told AFP.
"We have reached an agreement with (Jaafari's Shiite-led) United Iraqi Alliance on the names of six ministers and a deputy prime minister," Mishaan al-Juburi said.
Sunni leaders complained of under-representation after Jaafari left several key posts vacant in a first announcement Thursday.
The complete cabinet is expected to be submitted for parliamentary approval Tuesday.

05/02/2005 17:07 GMT